Israel: Human Rights Group Criticizes Army’s Crowd-Control Methods

An Israeli human rights group on Monday accused the military of “extensively and systematically” violating its own rules of engagement in suppressing Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank, contributing to dozens of deaths in recent years. According to a report by the group B’Tselem, 56 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with the Israeli military since 2005, most of them when live ammunition was fired at stone throwers. The Israeli military dismissed the report as biased, and said it focused on events that were old or still under investigation. It called specific episodes in the report exceptions to military policy, not the rule.